Here come the Winter blues

By John Pierre | Oct 03, 2013

Well shucks. Summer appears to have thrown in the towel and Fall is upon us... shortly to be followed by (ugghh) Winter.

I can stand the occasional very warm summer days, though I sweat a few pounds off (not all bad), but I can't stand the cold. Yeah, I know, I can always put on more clothing, but that doesn't appeal to me. First, I don't wish to look like Nanook from the Yukon and second, when nature calls I don't relish the delay of having to divest myself of a few pounds of apparel before answering the call.

Fall, to some degree, and Winter are an abomination to my thinking. I very much dislike the feeling of being colder'n a welldigger's nose holes and the resultant icicles hanging from the aforementioned proboscis.

Snow? If I were a youngster with a sled that has been idle for many months, I would relish the appearance of the first snowfall on Edmonds' steep hills. But I am no longer a youngster, and I don't look forward to the need for installing chains and/or paying the toll for having studded snow tires installed on my car only to have them un-installed a few months later at additional expense.

I imagine there are numbers of our Edmonds neighbors who look forward to snow. They must be retired or unemployed, and their memory has faded about the difficulty of driving south on I-5 to Seattle or, for that matter, north to Everett.

Each of those trips causes one to have to watch out for knotheads who spin out at the drop of a hat and then spin their drive wheels at a high rate apparently in hopes of burning their way down through the snow and ice to solid pavement. That exercise never works, and the smell of burning rubber is hard to tolerate.

Folks from areas where snow is no problem don't seem to understand that our snow is WET and is more difficult in which to navigate for the previously mentioned knotheads. For we skilled drivers (such as myself... yes, I'll take a bow) snow is just a matter to take into consideration so that braking and acceleration are necessarily a cause for gentleness.

Were my wife and I sufficiently wealthy, I might consider a seasonal move to warmer, drier country like some of our acquaintances do each year. But, dang, we don't have the necessary bank account, nor do I relish leaving our land of green trees to venture into a desert of cacti, rattlesnakes, gila monsters and various and sundry other predatory critters.

Cold weather and all... I prefer to anchor my bones in the Great Northwest... at least on the western side of the Cascade Range.

Long live our green trees and cold Winter weather. It beats the socks off the alternatives.

The late John Pierre wrote his "Constant Curmudgeon" column for the Beacon every week for years. Here's what John wrote in his bio for the Beacon:

Born in Oregon during the Great Depression, my family moved constantly in search of work for a day, week or, if lucky for a month. We lived for varying periods of time in just about every state between Oregon and Florida (where we lived in a tent) and back again.

I joined the Navy on my 17th birthday, during the Korean War, and served on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier loading and fusing bombs and rockets on the AD-1 Skyraider prop driven planes of my squadron.

I was honorably discharged just before my 21st birthday four years later.

My wife and I were married in 1952 and have three grown children plus many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I spent almost 40 years with a highly successful car rental business where I started as car washer and, though I never graduated from high school, retired as Executive VP and GM of 33 offices in Washington and Oregon.

During those years, in addition to my other duties, I wrote, edited and caused the publishing of a monthly in-house newsletter.